Steve Sawczyn

  • The joys of a summer cold and the weird voice that came with it

    I’m actually feeling OK, but this summer cold I have has sure affected my voice in an unexpected way. summer-cold-may-19-2024-at-18-05-08-ss.m4a

  • Playing around with Aiko, an amazing, accessible transcription app for Mac and iOS

    I recently heard about this fantastic app, available for both Mac OS and iOS, called Aiko which leverages AI technology to transcribe audio. What sets Aiko apart from similar solutions though include, in part:

    • It's free, totally free.
    • Audio can be dictated directly into the app, or a pre-recorded file can be imported. I'm particularly excited about this second piece.
    • Everything happens on the end-user's device, nothing is sent to the cloud.
    • Multiple languages are supported, we're talking a lot of languages: 100 languages according to Aiko's home page.

    I was excited to test out this fascinating technology and so to really put it through it's paces, in a sub-optimal recording environment, I decided to record some audio using my Apple Watch, while standing outside with lots of traffic and other background noise. What follows is the unedited output of my little experiment. I'm also adding the actual recorded audio, so that you can get a sense of the crummy audio I gave Aiko to work with.

    Hello, and thanks for joining me today.

    I'm playing with an app called AIKO.

    It's an app that leverages Whisper, which is a technology made by OpenAI, the folks that brought us ChatGPT.

    Now unless you've been living under a rock for the past couple of months, I'm sure you've heard quite a lot about ChatGPT and the fascinating possibilities it opens up to us.

    Anyway, Whisper, and on top of that this AIKO app, allow transcription of audio.

    The interesting thing about it is that you can record directly in the AIKO app, or you can import audio, say from a file that was pre-recorded.

    For example, you might have a pre-recorded audio file of a lecture or a class.

    You would be able to import it into this AIKO app, transcription would happen, and then you would have the output as text.

    For my test today, I'm standing outside in front of my house recording on my Apple Watch with traffic going by.

    And the reason I'm doing this is because I wanted to come up with a very sub-optimal recording environment, just to better understand how the technology would deal with audio recorded in such an environment.

    I'm also trying to speak as naturally as I can without saying words like um and uh, things that I think often get said when speaking.

    The interesting thing about AIKO and the way that it transcribes audio is that it supposedly is able to insert punctuation correctly.

    I'm not sure if it does anything about paragraphs or not, but as the speaker, I don't have any way of controlling format.

    Once you run a file or recording through AIKO, the output is rendered as text.

    However, there are a few things you can do with it.

    First, you can of course copy the text into some other application.

    The other thing that you can do is have the text be timestamped.

    The reason that this can be handy is that you can use that then to create files that can be used as closed captioning for videos.

    Anyway, it is kind of loud out here, and so I will go back inside.

    I also didn't want to make this too long because I'm not sure if it'll work at all or how accurate it'll be, but my plan is to post this to the blog without editing it.

    Stop, stop, stop.

    Aiko-generated transcription from my Apple Watch recording.

    One final note, the dictation ends with the words "stop stop".  I didn't actually speak those words, but because I have VoiceOver activated on my Apple Watch, they were picked up in the recording as I located and activated the stop button.  This is definitely incredible technology and the price certainly can’t be beat. From an accessibility perspective, I found Aiko to be extremely accessible with VoiceOver on both Mac and IOS and since it is a native app using native controls, I feel confident that it will work with other assistive technologies as well. You can find more information about Aiko, including FAQs, links to app store pages and more here.

  • Demonstrating iReg, an app that allows recording on the Apple Watch

    Earlier this morning, I heard of iReg, an app that allows one to make audio recordings on the Apple Watch. In this brief episode, I provide a brief overview of the app. Darren Duff, @Darren_Duff on Twitter, has done a far more in-depth demo for those wishing to learn more.

  • Let's have a bit of weather

    We’re getting freezing rain outside and as it sounded kind of neat to me, I thought I’d share it with you.

  • Demo of Direct Touch Typing on iOS8

    In this audio demo, I discuss the new Direct Touch Typing input method introduced in iOS8 and show how it works with VoiceOver.

  • Audio Demo of adding a card to Apple Pay using the iPhone camera

    Apple’s new Apple Pay feature allows the iPhone camera to be used to add a new credit card. In this brief audio demo, I walk through this surprisingly accessible process using VoiceOver.

  • Some rain, thunder and a little wind as recorded with the Zoom IQ5 iPhone mic

    We just had a brief thunder storm pass through, so I thought it’d be a great opportunity to again play with the Zoom IQ5 iPhone mic.

  • Brief demo of the Yo app

    In this brief episode, I demonstrate the Yo app, an ultra simple, somewhat ridiculous app that has gone viral in recent months.

  • My demo of the Zoom IQ5 stereo mic for Lightning devices

    In this episode, I demonstrate the Zoom IQ5 stereo mic for Lightning devices. WARNING, as this is a live demo, there are severe fluctuations in audio volume.

  • Accepting physical credit card payments, the accessible PayPal solution

    For many small businesses, the inaccessibility of payment solutions have often posed barriers to accepting physical credit card payments. More recently, services such as Squared and PayPal have entered the arena with solutions that provide small businesses and individuals the ability to accept physical credit cards using a small device connected to an OS or Android device. Although ultra portable and ultra convenient, these solutions traditionally pose accessibility challenges as well, because the card reader devices connect via the headphone jack and this disables speech output which may be needed for accessibility.

    Although I wasn’t able to make a great deal of headway with the Squared solution, I did have success with PayPal’s. In the following audio demonstration, I’ll show how PayPal’s solution works with VoiceOver and will describe how to overcome it’s accessibility challenges.

  • In memory of Titanic, some interesting resources that bring events to life.

    So today is the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and as such, I thought I’d share a few rather interesting resources. One often overlooked aspect of the Titanic are the actions portrayed by her radio operators. Using Morse code, these brave folks not only did their absolute best to message the world that help was needed, but were daily engaged in handling lots of traffic to and from passengers. The BBC did a really neat documentary, “The Titanic, in Her own Words” on the radio operators. Using speech synthesizers to read out many of the Morse code messages recorded on this fateful night, you can’t help, but get an idea of just how chaotic things must have been. You can listen to this fascinating documentary here.

    There is also a Twitter stream, @TitanicRealtime, which is tweeting what events might have been like from a first person point of view. I’m watching these tweets as I write this post and have to say, it really helps bring this horrific event to life in a way that only social media can.

    I hope you enjoy these resources and find them as interesting as I do.

  • "Ship My Pants," only the best commercial ever!

    This Kmart commercial has got to be the best commercial ever.

    Direct link to Youtube video

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I03UmJbK0lA

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAWl5peI8HY

    Blue grass Bohemian Rhapsody? (Official) (by johannespud)

    This sounded so absurd when I originally saw this tweeted by @mcourcel, that of course I had to give it a listen. It’s definitely… well. maybe unique would be a good description?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAWl5peI8HY

    (Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

  • Gabbie celebrates at red Robin

    Gabbie celebrates at red Robin (mp3)

  • Zork on the xbox? who would have guessed.

    Zork on the xbox? who would have guessed. (mp3)

  • Banjo Boy live, sort of anyway

    Banjo Boy live, sort of anyway (mp3)

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1zbibxgFiw

    While visiting a former classmate in Braunschweig earlier today, I attempted to take a few videos. Half way through this one, I realized that the sighted person with me would probably do a much better job. Of course he was confused as I had my iPhone screen turned off and as such, he was unable to see anything.

    Braunschweig, like many German cities, is very old. One of the things I found most interesting, however, is that there are many Braille signs throughout the city, often accompanied with tactile models of the various buildings.

    As mentioned above, i attempted taking this video, but half way through, handed the iPhone off to another person. Anyway, hopefully that will at least explain any confusion in the video.

    Finally, in case you’re unable to access the video, click here for a direct link.

    (Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

  • tumblr_l4wocnbOke1qzoykb

    Testing the accessibility of audio playback yet again.

  • tumblr_l4wocnbOke1qzoykb

    Testing the accessibility of audio playback yet again.

  • tumblr_l1wf2rOGoB1qzoykb

    I’m not sure if Tumblr has improved the accessibility of their audio player, so thought I’d test with audio from this Lady Gaga parody I found on Youtube.

  • tumblr_l1wf2rOGoB1qzoykb

    I’m not sure if Tumblr has improved the accessibility of their audio player, so thought I’d test with audio from this Lady Gaga parody I found on Youtube.

  • tumblr_kxn2scNlk61qzoykb

    Can you hear me now?
    I’m posting this file to complement my earlier post concerning the accessibility of Tumblr’s embedded media player. If you’re able to hear this, please let me know which screen reader/OS combo you’re using?

  • tumblr_kxn2scNlk61qzoykb

    Can you hear me now?
    I’m posting this file to complement my earlier post concerning the accessibility of Tumblr’s embedded media player. If you’re able to hear this, please let me know which screen reader/OS combo you’re using?

  • tumblr_ku9gvmD5lu1qzoykb

    Testing audio

  • tumblr_ku9gvmD5lu1qzoykb

    Testing audio

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